Splash Damage Blog

New Brink PC Update Released

Submitted by badman on Wed, 06/08/2011 - 11:14

A new update for the PC version of Brink is now available, bringing with it a stack of fixes and improvements. Among the big ticket items in this update are a reworked server browser, a fix for the font corruption issue, better server performance, and the recently announced balance tweaks.

As before, all you have to do to download the update is sign into your Steam account (and ensure it's not in offline mode). A new version of the standalone dedicated server is available, as well - we recommend updating your server at the earliest convenience if you haven't already.

The full list of improvements and fixes in this update is available after the break.

General

Fixed font corruption issue

Removed look-at code when throwing items to team mates

Fixed players getting stuck if they attempted to deploy mid-mantle

Fixed multiple clicks being played when player jumps in multiplayer

Mines are now visible to spectators

Added support for minimizing the game when running in windowed mode

net_clientMaxRate can now be set on a client to tweak its own bandwidth requirements

Cheat-protected several potentially exploitable cvars

Removed some old, unused cvars

Added unsupported auto-save backup system for advanced users

Can read backup saves by setting "save_readFile" to the desired save

Setting "save_enableBackups" to 0 will disable the auto-save backups

User Interface

Revamped the server browser

Server browser filters are now remembered between sessions

Server browser now auto-refreshes the currently selected server

Ping is now displayed numerically on the scoreboard

Map loading screen now displays server name and IP

Tweaked UI flow when joining a match via Steam

Fixed exploit that allowed players to use locked customization items

Fixed issue when listening to one audio log but highlighting another

Fixed connecting to servers with '-' in their names

Balance

Tweaked objective times on several maps

Increased the time it takes Engineers to remove a Hackbox

Increased XP given for completing Primary Objectives

Reduced the duration of Adrenaline buff

Dedicated Servers

Fixed several dedicated server crashes

Improved messaging for unexpected server shutdowns

Reduced warning spam in dedicated server console

Increased default net_serverSnapshotDelay to 3 (from 1)

Lowers bandwidth and CPU usage by sending fewer snapshots each seconds; can be changed by server admins

Thanks for the heads up!
Just ran thru one mission of Refuel, and it was awesome
-Pings now no bars.
-Hack Time was Beautiful
-Love the server Browser implementation.
-I felt as if it was performing way better. Higher average FPS. ATI 5850 and a quad core.
Gonna be busy for a while I hope.

very nice! i will try it out later. this is good support. some irritating aspects are now gone even though i didn't see a huge amount of threads about them. seems splash damage is hitting the small stuff as well as the large stuff. keep it up please!

The weapon changes weren´t listed in the link he posted of said balance changes which is why I asked since I had also seen elsewhere that they were in the works. If reading wasn´t so hard you might have noticed this as well. :wink:

some nice changes
but is there any update when we will get a first person spectate mode, objective progress for spectators, working demo record/play and so on?
also will there be something like hltv/source tv?

:D nice job on the updates!!.
just logged in for the 1st time in 3 days, it might just be me but the game feels alot more smoother now, i have constant fps, and no more spikes whenever i enter certain parts of maps. very nice.
GJ on the server revamp too, now it feels more user friendly (wouldnt say it was complete though)
1 small nag though, i like the fact that you've changed the latency bars to ping m/s, but i would like both, if that makes sense. having the ping overlapping the latency bars if possible.
but still, great job on the updates, hopefully this will bring people back to the game!.:penguin: :stroggbanana:

to chat during intermissions get down consolle and type
say and whatever u wanna say
nice changes but its just 1 step ...i hope
btw crosshair must be editable
plz...give us back our et syringe / packets...
fix netcode or remove headshots they are ping dependent
remove weapon spread
need pause and restart
need demo rec
and game will be a good game

As others have already said, this is definitely a step in the right direction. The removal of auto-lock when buffing and the improved server browser are the two improvements that impress me the most. The server browser still seems to be missing the obvious option of hiding full servers, but other than that, it seems pretty good. I think the removal of auto-lock is pretty important because it seems to be an improvement that was specifically requested by the PC community. And I'm glad to see that SD listened.
First-person spectating, better shooting characteristics, demo support, improved sound localization, and a much better player-to-player communication framework (in-game chat, post-game chat, vsays, etc.) are the some of the other highly awaited and almost universally desired improvements that I think would help to make this game a lot better and more popular. I would love to see any of those things implemented in a near-future update.

great update, i was really hoping for the ping and the new server browser looks much better and it's good to know that you're working on weapon adjudments, as everyone said this is a step in the right direction, now start sprinting and give us some demo recording :tongue:

Perhaps SD expected us to be using in game VOIP instead of chat at the end of rounds? In-game VOIP works quite well, thankfully (I still want end-of-round chatting, of course).

In-game VOIP works except for the fact that you can't tell who is talking. Your name should pop up when you are talking don't you think? It's kind of important to know who is talking to you in a cooperative game.
And you might as well have removed Adrenaline from the game, I have yet to see it used effectively in a public game. How are you going to base your changes on competitive matches, that's why this game isn't any fun.

Perhaps SD expected us to be using in game VOIP instead of chat at the end of rounds? In-game VOIP works quite well, thankfully (I still want end-of-round chatting, of course).

I don't know if that question is supposed to be sarcastic and rhetorical or neither. If it was a serious question, then I sure hope the answer is no. Text chat is such staple in online PC games and so easy to do right that it's pretty much unforgivable for a PC game not to do it right these days.
It's pretty simple: In general, PC gamers want to be able to chat via text easily and effectively at any point during the online gaming experience. In Brink, there are too many moment when you can't chat via text at all even though you are connected to a server with other players. And when you CAN chat via text in those servers, it virtually never feels effective.
Plus, everyone who plays this game on PC presumably has a keyboard. Not everyone has a mic, and those that do have a mic might not feel like using it in-game for whatever reason. VOIP is also important, but I don't really think it should be conflated with text chat. Each needs to be supported properly in its own way.

Definitely step in the right direction.
In my opinion most important suggestions:
1)VIOP, Chat anytime, option to remove videos/commentary/congratulations screen
2)Vsays
3)Demo recording + first person view
4)Allow more console commands for us to mess around with

to chat during intermissions get down consolle and type
say and whatever u wanna say

Perhaps. But this isnt enough and its not convenient.
Also the problem is the warning messages which spam many lines and cause havoc in the console.

@zicogja421 Mostly sarcastic... obviously, I want text chat. However, I also don't find the lack of it to be a huge deal since VOIP is solid, works between rounds and the servers on which I play and/or care to communicate with it use VOIP regularly.
Indicators of who's talking do show up on the scoreboard, by the way.

VOIP has always worked... the only problem w/ VOIP was that the volume was turned down (db negative values).
I do fault SD for not including volume sliders, but any PC gamer worth his salt knows how to type s_volume[TAB] to fix this.
VOIP has been on for nearly every dedicated server I've joined, so while there may be a server admin that turns it off here and there, as long as you have your client volume settings adjusted, you're golden.

That does not mean it is working. The default volume settings being set to -6 effectively negate it entirely. So basically nothing has changed in terms of VOIP.. great.
EDIT: Speaking in terms of the general server population being able to use it, not for specific persons who tweak it. In my experience VOIP is rarely if ever used on regular PUB servers.

And you might as well have removed Adrenaline from the game, I have yet to see it used effectively in a public game.

Really? I use it regularly, escort a soldier going for a plant, an engy for a disarm, the passcode carrier on sectower, and Adrenaline is easy to apply and almost guarantees success. For pushes you can just slap it on the guy in front of you and hope it helps.

Well Done SD, some major awesome changes in there. Mostly I love the server browser fix and the pings as numbers. Awesome job.
Now if only we get an SDK your game will skyrocket and be alive to show your grankids what awesome game you made without being nostalgic.

Definitely step in the right direction.
In my opinion most important suggestions:
1)VIOP, Chat anytime, option to remove videos/commentary/congratulations screen
2)Vsays
3)Demo recording + first person view
4)Allow more console commands for us to mess around with
Perhaps. But this isnt enough and its not convenient.
Also the problem is the warning messages which spam many lines and cause havoc in the console.

i know... but at least u can chat :)
waiting for chat during intermissions

haa, this update is a good step into the right direction, we're close to a real Gold status :cool:
still tons of things to fix/add (text chat is really missing), I hope more patches will come :)

Game is still a mess performancewise.
WTF is wrong with you SD?Do you give a **** about your costumers who can't play your game?
Beside that it's a kinda nice patch but WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU!?
Fix your bloody game finally,performancewise.It's not funny anymore.

Game runs beautifully for me, on a GTX 280. Had you considered that it might be your graphics card manufacturer letting you down with bad drivers? :)
Cheers for the update SD - will test it tonight hopefully. The removal of auto-look is a great step for me - now we just need separate binds for abilities/actions and better/faster "target focus" code, and medic might finally be fun to play :)

Perhaps SD expected us to be using in game VOIP instead of chat at the end of rounds? In-game VOIP works quite well, thankfully (I still want end-of-round chatting, of course).

great idea for a big country like the USA. terrible for europe. my english is good :) my german is ok, french passable, i can order a milky coffee in italian and i know enough spanish to flirt with spanish ladies. not good enough let me communicate with a server full of different nationalities.
just a simple GG at the end of a game would be nice, especially after one of those long close games!

Game runs beautifully for me, on a GTX 280. Had you considered that it might be your graphics card manufacturer letting you down with bad drivers? :)
Cheers for the update SD - will test it tonight hopefully. The removal of auto-look is a great step for me - now we just need separate binds for abilities/actions and better/faster "target focus" code, and medic might finally be fun to play :)

Do you reall think one driver can magically give me a 50-60 steady FPS when ATI has a new driver out?
There is something wrong on SD's side too.I highly doubt that it's only ATI's fault.

Do you reall think one driver can magically give me a 50-60 steady FPS when ATI has a new driver out?

Yes - it's happened with games in the past, and there's no reason for it not to happen again :) NV users are unaffected by performance problems it seems, unless they own 5xx series cards. That isn't something going wrong with the game - that's GPU-specific, and SD has nothing to do with either GPUs or drivers. When a GTX 280 outperforms a GTX 5xx with a new game, who do you think is to blame hmm? :) I see no logical reason to blame SD for what appear to be poor implementations of OpenGL driver code - a common and well-documented problem for ATI, over the years.

A sweet update indeed. All of the other stuff mentioned are things i'd like to see, so I won't mention them again, but one thing that would be nice to have but not really necessary is server queuing. When you click to join a server it just says 'full' and bumps you back to the server list, i'd like to be able to continue to wait and get dropped in as soon as a spot becomes available. Handy when you want into your fave server and don't mind waiting.

today I played on two servers. one was okay. the other where it was freezing and the character was dragging from lag spikes.
I never experienced it this bad before. I was thinking its just the servers fault since the other server didnt have the problem,/

Do you reall think one driver can magically give me a 50-60 steady FPS when ATI has a new driver out?
There is something wrong on SD's side too.I highly doubt that it's only ATI's fault.

Seen it happen in a completely different game. This is the 3rd game I've seen that has had issues with certain models of ATI cards. All games have slowly gotten better as ATI have released newer drivers (and not as teh games have gotten patched).
The ATI driver guys have really screwed the pooch on some of their drivers. I never trusted them once AMD got their hooks in. They do good hardware but their software guys need a kick in the pants!

Do you reall think one driver can magically give me a 50-60 steady FPS when ATI has a new driver out?
There is something wrong on SD's side too.I highly doubt that it's only ATI's fault.

Did you apply the ATI hotfix to 11.5b?
Ever since I applied the hotfix I got a decent performance and yesterdays gamepatch added another 10-20 fps (depending on the gameplay situation).
I have a steady 45-50+ fps count now in 1080p with aa enabled and high details running on a several years old e6300 system with 2 GB ram and an ATI 6850 graphics card that's slower than the 58x0 series of ATI. (w/o weapon model, with model on it's noticably higher fps - and that's the minimum, it's mostly higher)

Thanks for the great update SD !! Good to see that you guys read and take suggestions in account.
There are still a few strong requests around, but overall there's been very good progress from day 1 release.
Keep up with the win sauce !

I was wondering whether the "AllocRenderModel called from a different thread for ..." bug has also been fixed without being listed explicitely.
Other than that as many people already stated, the update was a big step into the right direction, which should have happened before release. I guess the release had to come fast due to commercial necessities, but to release such a bugged game can kill a reputation quickly. It's just too noticable that time ran out when the console game was quickly ported for pc.
I just hope you didn't destroy the playerbase before there even was one to speak of. You better introduce some free weekends or something once you patched the remaining major issues to get some new players to the game before the game dies on pc.

Thank you for the Update! I am looking foreward to play with the balance tweaks!:D
BUT: Can someone tell me where I have to put/set up the "save_readFile" in oder to load a backup savegame?! :confused:
Thank you!

Yes - it's happened with games in the past, and there's no reason for it not to happen again :) NV users are unaffected by performance problems it seems, unless they own 5xx series cards. That isn't something going wrong with the game - that's GPU-specific, and SD has nothing to do with either GPUs or drivers. When a GTX 280 outperforms a GTX 5xx with a new game, who do you think is to blame hmm? :) I see no logical reason to blame SD for what appear to be poor implementations of OpenGL driver code - a common and well-documented problem for ATI, over the years.

Just wanted to tell you - and especially those at SD responsible for working on that stuff - that I am using a GTX 560 Ti and never had ANY problems with Brink performancewise. Got the game two weeks ago. If you, SD, need my complete specs to look into what's wrong with certain graphic cards, tell me and Im happy to share em.
Oh, and thanks a lot for that patch! But I want to add to what's still missing from the game: I think there's still no option to remove favourite servers, right? It's just a tiny thing, but you still should add that.

5870 vapour x, q9550 at 3.4GHz, 4 GB DDR 2 800
1920x1200 resolution, all settings on max, vsync off, HBAO off.
Get 35-120 FPS with an average of 60+, it performs well. I would say it should perform better (see ET:QW) but it is very pretty and playable, as is!
Good luck resolving your PC's performance issue.

Nice to see some positive feedback regarding performance, especially from two groups (NV 5xx and ATI ) that initially seemed to be affected quite badly :) I can appreciate that it seems logical to blame a game dev when most games seem fine, and only their product has issues - but that still doesn't mean it's the game dev's fault. One of these days, people will understand that - I hope :) While we still have OpenGL engines in use though, I think the problems will continue - more so for ATI owners than NV owners.

If your worried about performance, just turn your settings down!
Iv never liked looking at pretty graphics when playing games, find them distracting, all mine are ultra low and i enjoy 200 stable fps

wow, thanks for the tip. you got nvidia, huh? hell, i even tested a 640 x 480 resolution and i had around +5 more fps than before, while they were still dropping and the game was lagging and the aiming and movement was not responsive at all due to the framedrops.
5850 here and my frames drop to ~20-30 on resort in open areas as usual. nothing has changed for me, got the newest drivers and sheet like that. hoping for catalyst 11.6 to fix it, else i'm out for good since i'm interested in the competitive side of this game. but maps like reactor are hardly playable when your fps suddenly drop to ~30-40 when you are in a fight or when you enter a certain area of the map.. SIGH

wow, thanks for the tip. you got nvidia, huh? hell, i even tested a 640 x 480 resolution and i had around +5 more fps than before, while they were still dropping and the game was lagging and the aiming and movement was not responsive at all due to the framedrops.
5850 here and my frames drop to ~20-30 on resort in open areas as usual. nothing has changed for me, got the newest drivers and sheet like that. hoping for catalyst 11.6 to fix it, else i'm out for good since i'm interested in the competitive side of this game. but maps like reactor are hardly playable when your fps suddenly drop to ~30-40 when you are in a fight or when you enter a certain area of the map.. SIGH

If the catalysts are fixing the issues then start shouting at ATI to get their ass into gear. They're probably not supporting something properly.

Ha, I just upgraded from my Athlon 4400+ dual core to a quad core Phenom 9750.
Didn't get to try the quad before the new patch but dammmmn! my rig was totally CPU bound, that is for sure. Before I would get 30 fps if I was lucky and both cores were near maxed, now I'm at a solid 60+fps most of the time with 3 cores at ~70% and one core near max.
So, 2 extra cores + update = happy me. :) Thanks Splash Damage!
nVidia 9600GT, 1024x768, 2xAA, shadows on, high textures.

Thanks for the server changes
But i have one question
net_serverSnapshotDelay 3
What does that exactly do when i make it higher? Does it effect the game? Because i am just running private servers for competition players. If it doesn't effect the players i would like to make it higher.

BUT: Can someone tell me where I have to put/set up the "save_readFile" in oder to load a backup savegame?! :confused:
Thank you!

I noticed this already working w/o changing anything. Check your
\Steam\userdata\#####\22350\remote folder for
"game.save" (your current save game)
and "game.save.backup#" now auto-created when you launch the game. Note that the backup seems to be written when you launch the game, not when you close it, so I guess it's possible to lose a current session's progress if you are forced to restore. Haven't tested it, though... just examining the timestamps.

Thanks for the server changes
But i have one question
net_serverSnapshotDelay 3
What does that exactly do when i make it higher? Does it effect the game? Because i am just running private servers for competition players. If it doesn't effect the players i would like to make it higher.

When you lower it (not increase it, increase means a bigger delay between snapshots), the server generates more snapshots. This increases CPU and network usage (upstream for the server, downstream for the clients) while providing the client with more snapshots to run prediction of.
In general generating a single snapshot every 3 frames is just fine, the client prediction code deals with this very well. In theory you could get less prediction errors by pushing out more snapshots, but in practise when you take the prediction done for latency into account as well, there will not be much of a noticeable difference.

Mine are in the range of 20-30 FPS with ATI 5870. Lowest resolution and settings.

From one of sds earlier games (W:ET) the game was more cpu power dependant than video cards. It really gave a boost performance wise.
Maybe the same is true here (im not sure how ET:QW was)?
I have also seen in the past that people who have crossfire have some problems.
Do you use crossfire for that card?

Ditto. What you got for CPU? Running C2D @ 2.4ghz.
It shouldn't be this way, but its appearing that cpu plays a big role in the performance of this game.

Same boat prepatch(not tested with the latest yet) with a c2d 3gig an a 4870, oddly the 10.12 drivers give me a more stable performance (a roundish 40 with the fps config @ 1200x800). Having seen BF3 at E3 Im kinda loathed to even contemplate upgrading anything till September.